How to Save Time Updating Corporate Policies
It’s time to update your policies and you’re on a tight timeline — but don’t panic! The right policy management solution can save you time, effort, and stress.
For far too many businesses — small businesses especially — updating policies is a grueling manual process that takes time and attention away from other critical tasks. Some small to midsize companies may not even have adequate policies to begin with, making the task of updating that much more difficult.
As it is, the smaller HR teams at these businesses have quite the full plate. Between onboarding, offboarding, payroll, and benefits management, where can they find the time to author the new policies they desperately need, update the existing ones to comply with changing legislation, and ensure the language and protections reflect cultural norms?
Thankfully, there is a way to clear the massive time investment hurdle and update policies with ease.
The 7 Deadly Sins of a Policy Management System
Saving time and money
To illustrate how a policy management system can streamline the updating process, let’s break the issue down into a couple of common questions and rebuttals to consider.
Can the administrative burden of authoring, updating, approving, and completing employee attestations be simplified without an astronomical budget?
Yes, it can, and it might not be as hard as you think. In fact, there are some highly effective tools in the STAR Policy Management solution that can help. Ethics and compliance software systems vary greatly in many ways, so consider questions like ‘How heavy is the lift to implement the system?,’ and ‘How much does it cost?’ The answer to these questions will guide you in finding the right solution or implementation partner.
But I don’t even have all the policies I need or time to write them!
This is a fair concern for so many businesses. The key, especially for small HR teams, is to choose a partner to assist you — specifically one who has extensive expertise in authoring policies or can provide policy templates. Be sure to ask potential partners which policies come with the system, which policies you can easily edit and make your own, and if the vendor has resources that can author state-specific policies for you.
How quickly can this system help me get my policies done?
Depending on the system, fairly quickly. In fact, most modern compliance software systems no longer rely on old-school underlying document management systems. With data-driven, cloud-based policy management solutions, you can be up and live in days, ready to migrate your existing policies over and edit directly in the new system, facilitating easy updates for years to come.
Is there an easy way to determine which policies need to be updated?
In some systems, yes! Modern policy management systems are typically fully integrated with your case management system, so it becomes easy to determine which policies are the most frequently violated. Start with those, since repeated noncompliance may be indicative of poor phrasing, outdated regulatory guidance, or a dated approach to corporate ethics. You can also have the system identify frequently missed quiz questions during employee attestations, which can highlight policies that could use a refresh.
Bottom line: Many of today’s best policy management solutions include policy templates, can be implemented in days, and are priced to meet the budgets of small and midsize businesses. At StarCompliance, we work with companies around the globe to help them create strong ethics and compliance programs that serve their employees well. To learn more about what we can accomplish together, explore our full suite of compliance solutions or request a demo today.
The 7 Deadly Sins of a Policy Management System
